Greg Dyke’s resignation, the fall of Piers Morgan, a sideswipe at documentary maker Michael Moore, “made for TV beheadings” and a prophecy of doom for terrestial television, kicked off the Society of Editors annual conference.

Over a hundred delegates descended on the Centre for Life in Newcastle for the beginning of the three-day conference, which started with the keynote speech of Stewart Purvis, Professor of TV Journalism at City University and former Editor of ITN.

In his hour-long lecture he began by describing: “A quite extraordinary 12 months in journalism which have passed since the Society last met.”

But he paid tribute to the BBC staff who had stood by Greg Dyke and gone out on protest, saying the message that came from such action was that no one need fear the BBC would lose its independence while its workers had anything to do with the matter.

Prof Purvis told the audience that this had culminated in terrorists shooting their own films and the “morbid first” of the made for TV beheading, which had parallels with the recent Ken Bigley tragedy.

In closing he paid tribute to regional newspapers and broadcasters who were doing “more than their fair share” of training the next generation of journalists.

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